10-The Michigan Daily -Wednesday, June 29, 1994 Geggy Tah: Hard to categorize, good to hear, coming soon 8y Ted Watts Geggy Tah is a spunky band that takes its name from the inability of the little sisters of its two main mem- bers to pronounce those members' names. The band seems to take de- light in evading agenre. For, while on David Byrne's world music oriented Luaka Bop label, Geggy Tah hails from California and creates songs using (and sometimes inspired by) -1the oddest things. "I think I can be as influenced by acardriving by as by an album some- times, in terms of just sonically," ex- plainsTommy Jordan, the Tahhalfof the unit. "Or like a garage door going up. Like in (our song) 'L.A. Lujah.' We recorded that in a garage and the part that sounds like trumpets going 'Reargghhh!,' that squeak is just the garage door into the studio and that wasprettyinspiring.It'samazinghow spiritual it can be, a garage door." Unfortunately, that can't give you a very good indication of the band's sound. Picture them as They Might Be Giants but sounding a lot more playing keyboards, guitars, samples like David Byrne and being more and harmonica. We have a brick we intently serious at times.GregKurstin, play. The brick plays in the band, too. $ : let us," says Jordan. "Some venues won't let us. And we can't take her to London when we play there because of the six-month quarantine for ani- mals. She's better behaved than us, and, of course, she knows what we're thinking all the time." 0 "Rrrrrrrrr," says Gina. GEGGYTAHwiI p ayatSt. Andr tommorrow with Toad the Wet Sprocket. Doors open at 7:30. Call 961-MELT. :eeJt,/ This is Geggy Tah. Don't you want to trust them implicitly on sight? the Geggy half of the group, has stud- ied piano under Jaki Byard and has had quite a bit of interaction with other important jazzists. But Geggy Tah is not a normal type of musical setup in any respect. "(On tour) we switch around in- struments a lot," says Kurstin. "I'm i Th eLate-H i+e Muocies' Lchaw, -4- o0 s C,~ / en 0 i 4 £pec~ Sp61-1111 761939 I . II ., Pizz Pizza. i Tossed I Iwith cheese I Etrva:n Perpero, Pi Iplus 1 topping.' Ma:zve,",%"'",,*, DlxorI z s * n..31...a~rhi ~B..c. n Cheeseburer Feasts.. each with cheese I * Deep Dish 51.20 mere. 3 Deep Dlnh $1.20 morn. I us 2 toppIngs. 3 Exie /54. Velid at purticipeting IE xpireen /15/04. Velid et paridipting 3Expoea 8/15/94. Veri at pat ipating tosonlyN Notaidxwih any o e soe nly. No valddith any thoe stoety. Netotvld wftheay thor Ix cx Dx e it taox wer *x I ry i ecx eppob Dx ve yie tn e cotod d ing. Ourdri orscarry leox *oeodrii Our driers cryloesx sate dr vin. Our drivorx cry less thu $201%%00. D o s otz iee ppy the 4200 mo r tiotnsem thxan $2 00Dolee, eltcxey 154eeeu iex LeleCtS4ceiei iee le J~eie tV4eie -Pio Tommy plays a little red toy. Then he plays a trumpet, a little toy trumpet, some bottles and a steel drum. John the bass player plays mostly bass." Kurstin also illuminates a similar cacaphony of events surrounding the recording of their album. "A lot of the stuff was just Tommy andrme playing around, having fun. So most of the skeleton tracks were already done by the time we really started to do any- thing. Then we went to G-Son Stu- dios (the Beastie Boys' studio). We were hanging out and basically pol- ishing up the demos. Then we got our own equipment and recorded stuff in Tommy'sgrandfather'sbasement. So basically we started out in G-Son but went on and did a lot of stuff else- where, and a lot of it was done before any of that." ThecommonthreadinallofGeggy Tah's work may be Gina, their dog and model on the cover of their al- bum, "Grand Opening". She was present for the recording of the album and accompanies the group on tour. "We take her on stage when venues The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair With the Atom Stewart L. Udall Pantheon Books In the late 1940s the U.S. govern- ment opened a uranium mine in Ari- zona, and ignoring the warnings of several doctors and radiation experts, exposed Native American miners to levels of radiation 500 times greater than that allowed in other industries. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) refused to install proper venti- lation systems, and sent in doctors to diligently monitor the health of the miners, most of whom, as predicted, died from lung cancer. Stewart Udall, World WarII bomber pilot, U.S. rep- resentative and the Secretary of the Interior to Kennedy, documents these abuses, and many more, in his new book. "The Myths of August" is a compilation of his research on the subject of the Cold War and the U.S. government'segregiousactions in the name of national security. In addition to the travesty of the uranium mines, Udall describes the AEC's effort to suppress knowledge that its nuclear tests in Nevada were exposing Americans to dangerous lev- els of radiation .from fallout. Even more horrifying is the fact that medi- cal experts were again sent in to docu- ment the burgeoning cancer rates eve1 though nothing was or ever would done to protect the population. It should be nothing new to the public that government officials would seek to suppress knowledge that their experiments were killing people, but the fact that Udall impli- cates most of the scientific commu- nity that worked with the government is new. Yet it is unfortunate that Udall's book includes only a shod section on some of the more horrify- ing experiments conducted in the 1950s. For instance, the government has recently revealed that AEC scien- tists and doctors conducted experi- ments on 751 pregnant women with- out their consent who went to local hospitals in Tennessee for routine checkups. They were given injections of irradiated iron to see how many their children would develop cance . Udall writes his book so as to be accessible to the layperson, and he includes summaries of many argu- ments given by historians that show, for example, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary-lacking the support of military commanders who felt that Japan had already lost the war. After reading about the shocking lapses in moral judgment by some of our most prominent scientific and ci- vilian leaders, it is hard not to think of the words of Robert Guillain survey- ing the ruins of Hiroshima: "I am ashamed for the West. I am ashamed for science. I am ashamed for man- kind." Naomi Snyde Take a Reality Break. 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